The Sony side of the console gaming world has been a little too quiet of late, with Microsoft taking most of the headlines as excitement grows about the potential announcement of a next-generation Xbox console. That could all change as Sony’s Vice President of Home Entertainment has dropped the biggest hint yet that his company could have some intriguing announcements and unveilings in the pipeline ahead of this year’s E3 expo in June.

Although the Sony executive would never directly come out as part of any interview and mention the existence of the PlayStation 4 by name, he has provided speculation fuel as part of an interview with the Chile based Emol website. Console gamers have long been wondering what the next step will be for Sony in the gaming world, and although Hiroshi Sakamoto hasn’t gone as far as to name drop the PlayStation 4 or the internal Orbis codename; he has given implication that Sony could potentially break some news in the run up to the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

When directly asked about the status of their next-generation gaming console; Sakamoto wouldn’t be drawn on providing any exact specifics, but did give enough information to whet the appetite of console fans by declaring that the new PlayStation is not only "still a big secret" but that Sony as a company are "focused on the E3 gaming event". Sakamoto also confirmed that the public could expect an announcement to be made at the event itself in June or potentially before this year’s E3 begins.

Any announcement about Sony’s new PlayStation console certainly won’t come before May, with an actual release of the hardware not expected until the back end of this year at the earliest. A number of reports focused on Sony’s next-generation console are claiming that the company is preparing to roll out hardware that will be extremely affordable to users with the trade-off coming from a lower technical specification than some may have suspected.

The manufacturers of the PlayStation have long been of the opinion that their products have a longer shelf-life than most competing hardware on the market. If that is true and they are sticking to that belief, then the chances are that they don’t intend to release a notable hardware upgrade until the PlayStation 3 becomes a decade old in 2016. Stay tuned for more information as it developers in the run up to E3.

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